Monthly Archive: September 2011

If I had to declare a winner in last night’s debate, I’d say it was Dalton McGuinty. Both Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath were fine but they used too many rehearsed sound bites. They also relied on some of the same old ideas from other campaigns such as Hudak’s promise to reduce the size of the cabinet and Horwath’s plan to raise corporate tax rates. Yawn. And what the heck was this “ticket to the middle class” that Hudak kept talking about? Most voters are already there. To be sure, McGuinty fouled his nest going after Hudak’s views on foreign...

This is, bar none, the quietist election I’ve ever known. I can’t tell if no one cares or if there is a storm brewing and a government is about to be thrown out in Ontario. Only one party has been to my door canvassing. With but ten days to go, the other campaigns mustn’t have enough volunteers. There’s no question that Tim Hudak stumbled out of the gate. His sound bites about “foreign workers” were tasteless. Those who saluted were already voting for him anyway. But there must have many voters who cringed and thought, “He’s as bad as I feared.”...

The Canadian Journalism Project has published a list of the top 27 books every journalism student should read. What a great idea except the list looks more suitable for students at Columbia than Canada. Of the 27, three-quarters are non-Canadians, mostly American authors. I can’t imagine the people of any other country in the world being so self-effacing to the point of such silliness. Folks associated with The Washington Post have three on the list: All the President’s Men, by Woodward and Bernstein, plus memoirs by Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee. Other big-name Americans on the list who have written...

With the Ontario election getting under way, I’ve been amazed at how well Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has fared to date. His party has been polling slightly ahead of Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals. Even in those areas where McGuinty leads in voter trust (energy, environment, and the economy), Hudak is just a few percentage points behind. I say amazed because I think I follow politics pretty closely and I couldn’t tell you with any certainty where Hudak stands on any of those topics. I can’t imagine too many other Ontario voters can either. Perhaps the numbers can be explained by...